Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Google Adsense Made Simple

Its all about Ad Sense! Google Adsense. Smashing Magazine compiled a wonderful list of resources and tips for new comers. Read on.

Google AdSense is probably one of the most popular revenue generators in the Web. We hear the stories about bloggers-genies, who manage to turn their blogs into cash machines overnight. However, it’s not that simple to find the actual tips, which stick to Google policies, might increase your revenues and don’t try to trick out the readers of your weblog.

We’ve spent several hours, trying to find out, what might increase your Google AdSense income and which tools you can use to observe and track your revenues. We’ve selected the key-points of successful stories and useful tips as well as Google AdSense sites and services you can use on a daily basis. Let’s take a look.

Things You Most Probably Didn't Know About Google AdSense

“AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.

However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.”[100 Google Adsense Tips]

“First impressions count: make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser.”[Inside AdSense: First impressions count]

“Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well.”[Where should I place Google ads on my pages?]

“The middle, above the fold location performs the best. Best performing ad format is the large rectangle, 336×280. So the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user.

So the wider formats do best so specifically, the top three formats are the 336×280 that you see on the page; the 300×250 medium rectangle; and then the 160×600 wide skyscraper.

We have a feature in the AdSense account where you are able to multi-select different color palettes that blend with your site to add some variety and freshness to the ads. And that also will help decrease ad blindness.”[Google AdSense Optimization Webinar]

“The second most active placement in terms of click-throughs tends to be the right-hand rail or margin”. “Skyscrapers” and vertical banners do well when placed next to the content in the main body. Square and rectangle ads placed within the center column also do well, provided they are placed in context to the content. Ads placed below the fold tend to perform least well, although that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.”[Yahoo! Publisher Network: Location, location, location…]

“I found the most success in placing the Google Adsense medium rectangle either right in the middle of the page or in a middle right column as long as it has content above and below the ad unit. Its is fine to use Adsense Ads on a forum however expect a very low CTR.”[Google Adsense Tips for Webmasters]

“Post Adsense ads on text rich pages, avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’, place Ads above the fold, Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site, Blend ads with your page - remove the borders by having a similar color as your background.”[How to Increase Google Adsense CTR]

“To remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense develop sufficient good content with keywords, Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site.”[How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense]

“Over the weekend, I decided to change the number of ads units on my blog based upon where the traffic is coming from. I have a small PHP function that checks to see if the referrer is a search engine, and if it is, I display and additional 2 ad units. My Adsense revenue increasing by 284% on Saturday, Sunday and Monday!”[Positive Adsense Experiment]

“Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. Never change the Adsense code. Do not run competitive contextual text ad (2006) or search services on the same site. Do not mask ad elements. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing.”[ 15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS ]

“A number of factors come into play when AdSense tries to determine what the page is about: The URL of the page, the page title, the anchor text of links, the keywords that appear most frequently within the page, search engine queries that lead to the page or to another page that links to the page”.[How to Get Relevant AdSense Ads (Especially For Bloggers)]

“Ask yourself if you are willing to compromise your blog’s layout and over-all feel by adding ads in them. Look at your traffic and see if it’s enough to draw the crowd. Make good use of the Ad Channels. Give it time.”[Tips on Blog Adsensification]

“You can put upto 3 AdSense units on a page. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content. Go Wide - the large rectangle 336×280 is the best paying adsense format.”[Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for HigherCTR]

Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense ReportsCharts include: total earnings, clickthru-rate, earnings per click, number of clicks, earnings per impression, number of page impressions, earnings by day of week and earnings by day of month. Most of charts include 7-day moving averages which allow you to spot trends within your results.

AdSense NichesIf you want to make money with Adsense, NicheGeek’s free AdSense niches will show you exactly what niche you need to be in if you want to make 20, 30, 50, 70 cents per click or even more.